It is pretty obvious that the world of Lego is not a kid's game anymore. Considering that many adult builders have created some interesting Lego brick replicas of historic and architecture structures, it should be no surprise that someone has taken the time to build a Lego replica of the Vatican. Priest Bob Simon has created this structure with a half million bricks in less than a year, and this is his story.
According to Mashable, this Lego Replica was built by Bob Simon, a pastor at St. Catherine of Siena Church in Moscow, Pennsylvania. This Lego Vatican is now on display at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, and the sculpture will be displayed in Franklin Institute's "Vatican Splendors" exhibition, which will run until February.
The work itself took about ten months and required 500,000 individual Lego bricks. The display measures at 14 by 6 feet and weighs about 100 pounds. Pastor Bob Simon began gathering the proper bricks about two years before the construction process, and began building in September 2014, knowing that Pope Francis would be visiting the City of Brotherly Love.
The Vatican replica is a representation of St. Peter's Basilica and the surrounding St. Peter's Square. There is a minifig (a Lego figure of a specific size used in many Lego sets) of a Lego Pope waving to the crowd, and there are lots of people like nuns with iPhones and even a Lego Elvis Presley minifing in the crowd. Simon wanted to show a lot of diversity in the crowd as St. Peter's Square brings people from all over the world into one place. Speaking of diversity, the statues have a lot of great detail on them as well.
USA Today states that Pastor Bob Simon has always wanted to build a Lego Vatican model since the seventh grade, so this is an accumulation of a childhood dream. He states that his previous attempts did not look anything like the real thing, and since he is 50 years old, he could have attempted a number of builds of a Lego Vatican. He also states that the construction process of the Lego Vatican was a lot like the repetitive motion of praying the rosary and the constructing the replica of the Lego Vatican was a "very quiet experience at the end of the day".
There are some that would criticize that a Lego replica of the Vatican is a waste of the pastor's time, that he should be doing godly duties instead of playing with Lego bricks. However, the Lego Vatican has attracted record crowds to the Franklin Institute, so it appears that Pastor Bob Simon's time was well-spent.
Considering that Pope Francis is planning to drop by Philadelphia for his U.S. tour next week, perhaps he might want to stop by and see how good of a job this priest did. Unfortunately, the current word is that Pope Francis won't be stopping by at all, according to The Independent.
